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Last year, analysts from Gartner and IDC predicted that we might see tentative signs of recovery in the PC industry this year as enterprise upgrades to Windows 10, Skylake, and new all-in-ones finally sparked some signs of growth. That could still happen later this year, but it hasn’t happened yet — Q1 2016 sales fell 11.5% according to IDC and 9.6% according to Gartner. Total unit shipments were below equivalent sales in 2007.

“Vendors that had a strong consumer focus struggled to increase sell in shipments. There was no particular motivation for U.S. consumers to purchase PCs in the first quarter of 2016,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principle PC analyst for Gartner. “There have been increased sales of two-in-one PCs, but not enough to offset the decline in desktop and traditional notebook sales.”

PC sales slumped through 2015 and are still slumping

The reasons for the continued decline range from an enterprise upgrade cycle to Windows 10 that isn’t expected to kick into gear until late this year, continued deterioration of foreign currencies against the US dollar (a strong dollar means foreign consumers pay more for US products), and political instability in Latin America all counted against the struggling industry.

IDC also noted that sluggish inventory clearance caused problems through much of 2015 and into 2016, though that activity is thought to be wrapping up. “Demand for PCs in the U.S. remains sluggish,” said IDC Research Director, Devices & Displays, Linn Huang. “However, we should be entering a period of reprieve. Peak corporate and education buying seasons have historically started in the second quarter. With some IT buyers thinking about early Windows 10 transitions and with the potential continued ascent of Chromebooks in U.S. K-12, the PC market should experience a modest rebound in the coming months.”

The impact on Intel and AMD

Intel has dodged most of the negative impact on its financials thanks to increased reliance on its server and software divisions. The firm’s strong position across the entire PC market has also given it some room to maneuver on revenue — 2-in-1’s are the industry’s one bright spot, and Intel owns the overwhelming majority of those design wins.

AMD has taken a hammering from declines in the PC market, and nothing in the first quarter results suggests that’s changed. While AMD’s problems can’t be blamed solely on the precipitous drop in PC sales over the past six years, the firm would have earned hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue if the PC market hadn’t slowed so dramatically.

To put this in perspective: In Q1 2010, the PC industry shipped 84.3 million units compared with 60.6 million units in 2016, a decline of 23.7 million systems. If we assume that AMD might have won 18% of that 23.7 million and earned a net profit of just $25 per chip, that’s $106.65 million of profit that’s vanished into the ether, in one quarter. Granted, these numbers are hypothetical, but they serve to make the underlying point — AMD’s financial problems these past few years aren’t just a result of the company’s competitive position — they’ve been critically exposed by declines in the PC space.

Gartner is still predicting a bottom-out this year and small recovery next.

Intel may not be taking the beating that its rival has, but the manufacturer is still concerned about long-term segment performance. When Intel sat down to talk about its then-upcoming Haswell launches back in 2013, it talked about a five-year upgrade cycle. When we talked to the company last summer, that number had shifted to an eight-year upgrade cycle. The ugly truth is that many households aren’t upgrading their PCs on any cycle — and they’re not exactly going crazy for tablets, either.

These issues underscore the difficult climb AMD is facing with its Zen architecture, which will be slugging it out with Intel to claim pieces of a shrinking pie. They also illustrate why Intel would love nothing better than to find a way to reactivate historic Moore’s law scaling and return to the good old days when semiconductors reliably doubled in performance every 18-24 months. Microsoft’s new upgrade policy around Windows 10 is designed for a future in which people don’t upgrade their hardware on a regular basis, but that policy doesn’t favor hardware companies that rely on regular upgrade cycles.

Palmer Luckey has argued that VR could revitalize the PC industry, but such recovery would be limited to PC gamers able to afford the high cost of VR — and right now, with $1,500+ all-in costs, that’s not many. VR could give the luxury and boutique industries a needed lift, but there’s no real evidence that these small segments are in trouble to begin with. The PC gaming business is robust, but dedicated gaming rigs (self-built or pre-assembled) are a distinct minority of the total PC industry.

Right now, industry analysts are hoping that enterprise upgrades will kick the PC business into a net uptick by the end of the year. If they don’t, we may find out just how bad things can get.

Tagged In

Why would it be otherwise? Older devices are able to keep up with the needs of many while new devices are more powerful, yet don’t yield as much benefit to the users. Browsers, office, video playback, you don’t need an I7 6950x for all these things.

There have been quad cores for how long now? What do the vast majority of the population do during the day to day? With phones having more than enough capabilities and a much stronger app support and ecosystem i wouldn’t be surprised if this trend continues.

PC Market might make a comeback when Windows 10 drops support for older hardware and the older PC’s start dying.

Joel Hruska

How quickly people forget.

“Why would it be otherwise?”

Because from 1980 – 2010 or so, it *was* otherwise.

“Older devices are able to keep up with the needs of many while new devices are more powerful, yet don’t yield as much benefit to the users. Browsers, office, video playback, you don’t need an I7 6950x for all these things.”

Yeah. They didn’t used to be able to do that. While most people never needed the Core i7-6950X equivalent over the decades, plenty of people needed more processing power repeatedly.

“What do the vast majority of the population do during the day to day?”

Again, you’re missing the point. For 30 years, the rapid evolution of software and hardware ensured that the regular joe users *did* need more processing power every 3-5 years. The first quad-core CPUs date back nearly a decade at this point, but quad-core didn’t go mainstream (sub-$200 price point) until relatively recently. I think it’s been about five years since they started breaking the $200 mark.

Daniel Anderson

So in one vein you use a cute comment like “how quickly people forget…because from 1980-2010 or so, it *was* otherwise” and then you admit that its no longer that people need the absolute best hardware to run their day to day lives? You might want to check your arrogance because that’s exactly what I’m saying.

The 2nd half of your comment is redundant, your saying I’m missing the point by rehashing what I’ve already said. Where the hell are you getting confused?

What I’m saying is, for decades, people *needed* the latest-and-greatest. I agree, of course, that they no longer do. What struck me is that your remark was half of the perennial cry whenever a new CPU would drop.

“Who needs X?” was one part of the refrain. But shortly thereafter, everybody figured out they needed X. What was seen as ridiculously overpowerful quickly became the standard.

For decades, it *was* otherwise. And yet in a few short years (relative to the length of time computers have been around), we’ve all gotten used to CPUs and hardware that last 2, 3, 4x longer than they used to. We’ve forgotten that we used to accept an entirely different status quo in which manufacturers found uses for that additional performance.

Daniel Anderson

Your new comment:
What I’m saying is, for decades, people *needed* the latest-and-greatest. I agree, of course, that they no longer do. What struck me is that your remark was half of the perennial cry whenever a new CPU would drop.

My first Comment:
Older devices are able to keep up with the needs of many while new devices are more powerful, yet don’t yield as much benefit to the users. Browsers, office, video playback, you don’t need an I7 6950x for all these things.

Thats one example of you just rehashing what I’ve already stated attempting to explain to me what I already know. Yet again, effectively agreeing with me however attempting to argue the same point I am making. Its almost funny at this point.

ChrisPollard77

For a long time, you really DID need new hardware to keep up to software. But that hasn’t been the case now for a long time – and the push to more and more software going to web-based services proves it. For a lot of people, their laptop/desktop has become their secondary device – where they go when they need more oomph than their phone or iPad can provide.

Simple fact. 5/6/7 year old mid to top tier hardware is every bit as usable these days with sufficient RAM, and really surprises people when they swap out hard drives for SSDs. My wife’s “new” computer last summer when her one year old laptop went for a dive was a now 5 year old refurb with an i5. I dropped an SSD in the thing, kicked up the RAM, and it’s not that much slower than my one month old Skylake i5 in day-to-day use. (Office/web browsing/etc) The newer i5 is a bit quicker in some Photoshop/video tasks, but it’s crazy to see just how snappy a 5 year old i5 runs when the hard drive isn’t getting in the way.

That’s why people aren’t out buying new computers in droves. It’s not like the old days when going from a 286 to a 486 was like entering a whole new computing world. Now it’s all just marginally faster. And if you spend enough, you get some cool extra features in new hardware. But they’re not big enough to drive people to replace what still works.

Daniel Anderson

Literaly my sentiments exactly.

“Older devices are able to keep up with the needs of many while new devices are more powerful, yet don’t yield as much benefit to the users. Browsers, office, video playback, you don’t need an I7 6950x for all these things.”

Joel Hruska

Let’s just chalk this up to fatigue and miscommunication. I apologize if I was dismissive or rude.

Laven Pillay

Good man ! This is a silly comment for me to make, but I actually did want to applaud you for reacting in a mature way that I almost never see on “the internet” these days. :)

Crunchy005

No need to be so defensive, I thought Joel’s comment was a nice extension and agreement of your first one. How you responded I feel was rude as he was mainly agreeing with you and now you have posted your “older devices are able to keep up…” comment 5 times over, lets not be repetitive.

Daniel Anderson

Could care less how you felt. If I opened a response to you with “how quickly they forget” as if you weren’t reading a comment directed at you, and then proceeded to just restate what you’ve stated, you’d feel different. Go protect joel elsewhere.

Crunchy005

Your an angry little man aren’t you? I was actually more annoyed at your being repetitive and only having one thing to say than anything else. You replied with the same copy paste to almost every post on the thread. Why don’t you take that anger elsewhere?

Daniel Anderson

Oh did you protect the hurt Author? Such a big boy, yes you are. Joel is so lucky to have you here. The protector of the interwebs. Sucks that you think I actually care about your “tough guy” keyboard warrior comments. “Angry little man” so macho. If only you even knew what you were arguing for.

PS: Still don’t care.

Crunchy005

I wasn’t protecting anyone, I just liked what the author had to add, Your the one that sounds hurt right now. Take a look in the mirror you will see plenty of tears. Also if you still didn’t care, then why did you comment?

Daniel Anderson

Just like how you don’t care for “angry little men” yet cared enough to comment? Or how about even where Joel chalked it up to a misunderstanding? But no, a conversation ending isn’t enough for you, you want to come in and interject into something already done and give 2 cents that no one cares about. Take a knee capt you really don’t know what you’re even talking about.

Crunchy005

I wasn’t the one stating I didn’t care, so yes I did care enough to comment. Also you were way to easy to troll. I spend to much time on wccftech forums, me thinks. O and by the way I’m a systems admin for my company, so I follow computer hardware closely and yes I do know a good bit about it.

Daniel Anderson

You have a ways to go to learn about proper trolling. No less your comments said nothing about hardware, but only your emotions.

Crunchy005

Ya, that hardware stuff was already said, and I felt like trolling a bit. I was actually playing off of and talking about your emotions but OK. If you want to twist stuff to fit into your fantasies that’s fine. At this point your trying to insult me and put me below you. You already got trolled don’t try to backpedal.

Daniel Anderson

“how you responded I feel was rude”

You talked about your feelings in your first comment. Confirmed that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Shift that goal post.

Crunchy005

Lol, because I thought you were rude to the author means I know nothing. So you thought I was defending him so you know nothing. Great logic right?

Daniel Anderson

No you felt. not thought. “Feel” is an emotional state. Nice try though, but like i said, you’re novice at best. You even stated you “thought Joel’s comment was a nice extension and agreement of your first one” which is a comment in defense of another also is not only false due to his initial attempt at wit in an attempt to promote his own experience over others with comments like “oh they never learn” which means he was trying to explain something another already knew. You need more practice and additional reading comprehension. You are awarded no points, and may zod have mercy on your soul.

Crunchy005

Wow, get outside of your mom’s basement ever once an a while “may zod have mercy” lol. Either way yes the first comment was what I felt and thought. Everything after that has just been getting you to react and get angry. Which has been achieved lol.

Daniel Anderson

Can’t even stick by your own words and feed your own delusions. Have fun with that.

Crunchy005

Lol ok

Will Ovtuth

A lot of the problem is because software is so lacking. Were lucky if most programs use more than two cores, of course audio/ image editing is a given because they e always been heavy hitters, and the programing being done is lacking and done by some lazy programers. Plus were barely using 64 bit os enviornments when really we should be seeing 128 bit OS debuts and the correctly written programs to go with it. Were at the point now where were lucky if we can get correctly written/running drivers for the hardware they want us to buy. Nothing is going to happen until AMD and Nvidia drop there new cards at the very least. If Windows wants in on that then they better start listening to their customers and make the Windows 10 we should have gotten or win 7 will continue to dominate well into the future.

Ascaris

It’s not really an issue of lazy programmers. The problem is that most things people do with computers are not easily parallelizable. If the results of computation A are required before computation B can begin, you can’t do both computations concurrently on separate cores. They have to be done serially; first A, then B.

This is why single-threaded performance is still very important, and it’s where AMD missed the bus. AMD bet on overall performance of a multicore CPU, while Intel bet on single-threaded performance within each of the cores. The result is that AMD still does not have a product that can match the single-threaded performance of a Sandy Bridge i5, fully five years after the first Sandy CPUs hit the market.

That’s not to say that there is no more performance improvement to be found in optimizing code for the multicore environment. It’s just not the “magic bullet” that a lot of people think it is.

As far as 128-bit OS: What benefit would there be in this? 64-bit already gives us more addressing space than we can use into the foreseeable future.

gremlin22

From 1980 to 2010, buying a new desktop was a joy. Everything about the new computer was better (unless it had Windows ME).

Now:
The hw is hardly better.
The OS is much worse. Either a worse version of Windows or Linux which is a nice kind of mess.
Most likely you buy a brand PC filled to the brim with unwanted SW.
Reinstalling everything is tricky.
Gaming is focused on consoles and tablets and neglected on desktop.
Productivity suites did not improve (in my opinion, ribonized to become worse).

If PC ecosystem companies (HW, SW, manufacturing) would actually try to sell us what we want then the decline will be far less severe.

I bought a desktop this year (after frying my old one). I installed Linux Mint hoping it is the lesser of evils. If I could easily buy Windows 7 I probably would have bought it an year earlier.

Cestarian

Yeah, Windows 7 was the last sane version of Windows, and Microsoft claims that Windows 10 is the last version of windows ever, sadly Windows 10 is just an abomination, the 8 looked bad, Windows 10 is just pure evil.

And sure Linux isn’t evil, it’s a lesser evil than any and every other OS… But it still sucks just as much as Windows and OS X do, just in different ways. I am not a happy computer user anymore, the last time I was a happy computer user was in the early Windows 7 era, at the time, Windows was awesome, and microsoft wasn’t as bad as it is today. All was right with the world. Then Windows 8 came along, and scared me away to use Linux, and Windows 10 came along basically to confirm that I can never use Windows again. Agony, but at least on Linux I feel about as good as I did in the Windows XP era, which is quite ok.

Linux is definitely a better choice than accepting a Win 10 EULA (gosh, it has ridiculous clauses).

Linux has a definite learning curve but once you master it and re-create your workflow around its ecosystem it serves you at least as well as Windows in most cases.

Linux desktops are still improving at a nice speed, just take a look at the new Cinnamon 3 features for Mint 18.

trparky

My four year old Intel Core i5 3570k Ivy Bridge CPU does everything I need it to do and more. With the SSD that I have in the system along with the 16 GBs of RAM and the ATi R9 380 video card in it this system has the potential to keep going strong for the next four years.

Yeah… Intel doesn’t like people like me. They want me to build a new PC every year or two.

With that being said, if you take an older computer and put an SSD into it you can watch it take off like a rocket. Putting an SSD into even an older machine can make it feel like new again.

It’s not the CPU or RAM that’s the biggest bottleneck in today’s PC, it’s the lowly hard drive. Replace that old hard drive with an SSD and even an older machine will feel so much more responsive.

Bob Plissken

wow, a single anecdotal report by someone who only uses his computer to browse webpages! that’s super relevant!

trparky

Excuse me? Are you saying that I only use my computer for web browsing? With that kind of hardware I rattled off can’t you tell that’s a gaming rig?

ChrisPollard77

Bob, every word he said there is 100% factual. Hard drives are THE single biggest performance suck in any computer not running an SSD. Change that drive, discover what your computer actually is capable of. My wife’s laptop went from unusable (8-10 second lag right clicking in Word documents) to faster than the last-gen Core i7 workstation I have at the office. And it’s ALL because of the hard drive vs. SSD.

gtiger

Did you start with installing the OS fresh, or did you clone the old system? I can get quite respectable performance from an old system by simply wiping out the drive and installing the OS from scratch. The OS collects baggage over time.

Crunchy005

Because of the difference in how data is accessed on an SSD vs HDD an SSD can offer huge performance increases. In the way of load times(main benefit), and responsiveness(in certain situations), Refreshing the OS does help some, but it’s nothing like what a SSD offers.

Mr_Blastman

I have all my flight simulators on SSDs and notice a huge improvement in the feeling of fluidity in flight.

Conservative411

He hit the nail on the head. He is absolutely right. I have a whole corporation to prove it not just “a single anecdotal report”.

Tom

Being anecdotal and being correct are not mutually exclusive concepts, you know.

Ascaris

The only concern would be whether the TIM Intel used between the die and the IHS will last that long.

Perttu Lehtinen

…or when they again reinvent connectors and data buses with incompatible new ones that no-one asked for or needed.

Moonkey

“If they don’t, we may find out just how bad things can get.”

I’m sorry but you don’t hit market peaks and expect them to keep going higher and higher. None of this is doomsday like websites like you to believe.

It’s called Market Fluctuation and limits. We’ve hit a peak and things are rounding down now that the longevity of hardware is around. Not only this but building your own PC is now very popular and easy to do. A population of people are now becoming more technologically adept and aren’t on the “All-in-one” PC trend.

Joel Hruska

“I’m sorry but you don’t hit market peaks and expect them to keep going higher and higher. None of this is doomsday like websites like you to believe.”

As the graph above shows, the PC market grew for 30+ years straight. There was no reason to think it wouldn’t or couldn’t continue to grow — perhaps not at anything like an exponential rate, no, but as emerging markets came online and began modernizing, there was every reason to think they’d follow a PC adoption curve. Except they jumped straight for smartphones, bypassing the PC altogether.

“Not only this but building your own PC is now very popular and easy to do”

The PC industry isn’t 24 million systems off its peak because people suddenly discovered how to throw parts in a chassis, particularly not considering that the build-your-own industry is desktop-focused, and desktops are only about 35% of PC sales these days.

As for the current state of the PC market, let’s review:

Dell went private due to earnings pressure.
HP split into two separate companies.
AMD is financially on the ropes, and AMD has historically been vital to competition in the desktop, mobile, and server space.
Acer’s earnings have collapsed.

No one is forecasting that the PC market will literally or permanently die, but this downturn has shredded multiple companies around the world.

Moonkey

Hmm, I guess I’m relying too heavily on the assumption that people would purely use desktops, sometimes they only want bare necessities like a mobile laptop. I reacted without thinking on that part, my bad.

“The PC industry isn’t 24 million systems off its peak because people
suddenly discovered how to throw parts in a chassis, particularly not
considering that the build-your-own industry is desktop-focused, and
desktops are only about 35% of PC sales these days.”

Regardless, even in the laptop market, they can last quite a long while, and are usually pretty durable (still using mine after all these years). Even so, as your graphic illustration shows, mobile platforms, such as smartphones, have easily gained traction, as people move from laptops to phones that can have the same amount of power. I’m sorry.

Joel Hruska

Not a problem. I like robust conversations.

UniBeam

I really wish AMD would create a new product or enter a new market. With many past successful startups with even less resources than AMD, one would hope they would move more nimbly and try something new. Not hundreds of millions new, but where small startups leverage existing industries to create new products with less capital investment. As much as I’ve enjoyed AMD’s value over the years, it would be nice to see them innovate more instead of follow. Their semi-custom chips sound great but it doesn’t seem to do much for them revenue wise. I also wonder how well they are doing selling their branded SSDs and RAM because I haven’t heard a whole lot on that venture lately.

Ascaris

Some people are saying that the PC will die and be forgotten. They think that the current trend line will continue in its existing slope until sales reach zero. I’ve tried to argue that declining sales does not mean the PC platform is dying, but there some people who apparently think that now that the trend line has changed from growth to a decline, it can never change.

When I think of the glory days of PC sales, I think of the mid to late 90s, but the annual sales are now more than three times that level even after the decline.

Joel Hruska

No, claiming that the PC market is just going to die is ridiculous. At some point in the distant future we may one day have voice recognition so ubiquitous that keyboards are themselves seen as anachronistic and only used for writing when speaking would disrupt others. That’s possible — but it’s decades away.

There will be a market for machines we could readily identify as PCs for years if not decades to come. But how big that market is, and who survives the bumpy transition period — that’s still a major question.

John Brindle

Don’t apologise for your opinions. There is no need.

matthew brown

If a Windows 7 machine isn’t broken, no one is going to fix it by buying something with Windows 10 or Windows 8 on it. They stink. 10 only stinks a little less. People want to turn the computer on, then use it like any household appliance, not to have to create a Microsoft account, and have to log into it every time they want to use their personal property, as if it belonged to Microsoft.

Cestarian

10 stinks more than 8, actually reeks. It’s just that it’s a wolf in sheeps clothing that makes it look like it stinks less than the 8 when in reality it’s a million times worse, to the point that I would actually call it a villain. Windows 10 is the bad guy out to hurt all of it’s users in any way it can.

Steven Hollingsworth

I agree no wonder people stick to 7.

darkich

“The reasons for the continued decline range from an enterprise upgrade cycle to Windows 10 that isn’t expected to kick into gear until late this year, continued deterioration of foreign currencies against the US dollar (a strong dollar means foreign consumers pay more for US products), and political instability in Latin America all counted against the struggling industry.”

LOL.

The OBVIOUS reason for continuing decline of desktop PC is the rise of pocket PC, aka “smartphone.”
The average Joe simply doesn’t care about playing games on 60fps and 4K, or modelling high polygon 3D projects.
For any task that a smartphone isn’t practical for, such as typing and printing some documents, storing data..the old cans are more than good enough.

Joel Hruska

I could have worded that a bit more clearly. I’m speaking about the continued decline, not the initial drop off. Tablets, for example, are showing their own signs of slowing down. Smartphones have hit saturation point.

For those of us who own and work with all of these devices, a smartphone is no more a replacement for a laptop than a desktop is. It’s true, I can do many of the same things on a smartphone that I can do on a laptop, but “many” does not mean “all” and it does not mean “With the same speed or ease of use.”

darkich

And you’re not an average consumer.
The continued decline is again the consequence of a pocket pc/palmtop.
Example, a few years ago my mom wanted a new computer, and now, when she learned to use a palmtop and realized that she can so conveniently cover all the information and communication needs with it – she completely forgot about the desktop/laptop idea. It is crossed for good.

The same happens in developing markets, where palmtop devices have cut off the need for people who never owned a pc, to buy one. They don’t even think about it.

And those markets were fueling the pc growth.

And for the “but smartphone is only good for Facebook, candy crush, photos and ims.. ” line of thought, here’s my example – I decided to go through the experiment(since I try to live as resource-efficiently as I can) of ditching my desktop, laptop and see how well I will manage with a palmtop only.
Similarly to this guy..

..2.5 years on, I merely play with the thought of buying a laptop once all the laptop pieces fit together (high res display, under 2 kg of weight, large ssd, touchscreen, physical tablet mode, and next generation Nvidia /Amd graphics- for under 800$)..but until then, I manage just fine with just a palmtop (Samsung Note 3, I think that you would be impressed with all that this trusty old device is capable of doing once all of its potentials are maximized)

Cestarian

Don’t expect enterprise upgrade cycle to Windows 10 to happen, ever since Windows 8 more and more corporations and even governments have been calling microsoft out on its shit, and decided to turn elsewhere after Windows 7’s life ends

BROneagli

Didn’t traditional desktop change when software optimization started to take hold. You use to have to buy new hardware cause software was designed for the next gen, per say. Games always required newer hardware, OS required new hardware, etc., but once software optimization started to take place, you no longer needed the hardware. Now with the trend going towards cloud computing (Office 365) you no longer need the software on a single computer. Again though, I do love sitting at my desk with a full keyboard, a 27 inch monitor, and able to see multiple apps open at the same time.

ja_1410

Technology matured. Why is it a story exactly?

Bert Tweetering

the hardships of an industry that has forever been only familiar to the growth stage of its products, and is adjusting to this mature and approaching-fully-developed stage.

maybe something like AI will drive another era of growth. recent and newer pc’s are more than capable of VR already. it’ll take another software revolution like that. I’m hoping for things that will make a roomba look like an antique and be useful around the house; maybe even do dishes.

Fantasm

If Windows 7 or even Windows 8 is working fine, then why bother going to windows 10?
If an Android tablet does what you need then why bother with Windows 10?
I’ve run Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10…. Really prefer Windows 7….

Bob

Because in a few years Windows 7 will stop receiving security updates or any other type of update. Actually I am at windows 10 now, and feel it is more secure.

Ian Skinner

just built an A10 for my son and plan to build two more systems then the new AMD discreet CPU/GPU’s are launched later this year..

Fantasm

Another part of the decline is employment issues… Too many jobs are being offshored to third world countries… Ask someone making minimum wage if they have plans to go out and get a new desktop PC or top of the line laptop or tablet… Not likely… The old system will do for now… and for as long as they can keep it working…

Sandra Beach

You don’t need a PC to check your email or surf the internet. I will be building a new PC very soon. I will NOT be installing Win10-NSA Edition. Real gamers use PCs, Everyone else uses smart phones and kiddie consoles.

Bert Tweetering

smart phones and tablets do sometimes make a bare minimum substitute for real computers. it’s sad though because they’re just lousy and people hardly seem to notice because they get used to it.

I think that a real keyboard and mouse would be a bare minimum for real computing, as well as a non tablet GUI.

kudos to avoiding win10. I think some of the new features are nice: finally multiple worspaces and expo-like window switching similar to what linux mint cinnamon has had for years, as well as the supposed ubuntu shell and binary compatibility (haven’t tried this yet). I’ve played around with it a little, but still am biased against it, and I don’t think of windows is a serious or preferable OS. it’s ok for basic browsing, and of course games, where it’s still the default OS despite a lot of progress and expanding game availability with steam/linux.

Last year was “R” as only x86 “Refresh” at 28nm. But the true “R” will be next year as “Revelation”. The best of both ISA worlds: half-x86 (CISC) and half-ARM (RISC) SoC at 16nm with DX12 GPU part SoC.

One SoC for all and all for one SoC.

Uncle_Fred

The technology around PC’s has matured enough that it has become a commodity item. Outside niche markets like boutique gaming and graphics workstation custom builds, most users can get by with less and older hardware.

Solaris X

Restart from 7 and people will buy desktops again.

Bob Plissken

Overreaction to a temporary decline in sales as always. Desktop/notebooks are going nowhere as long as people want to do actual work and not just play angry birds.

RH

Most “home PC”, for the majority of consumers, were used to check email, browse the web, watch cat videos on youtube, play a couple games etc, maybe do a couple work or school related things, but, were not really used for much else. You can do all of that on your phone or a tablet, so, why have both?
I still use a laptop, home PC, but, I do a lot of photoshop work, which really can’t be done at the level that a phone or tablet can handle.

Reginald Peebottom

In fairness, the PC market has seen effective stagnation and now declines for the better part of the last decade. In part, that’s due to market maturation: PCs were new in the 80s and 90s for mainstream consumers. Eventually, everyone who was going to get one got one. And it’s a bit like cars back in the 50s and 60s where people did upgrade their cars every few years. It wasn’t until the late 70s and 80s where the rise of the better built Japanese car (the analog to the older but still good computer now) put an end to the automotive gravy train as US manufacturers knew it.

I also believe that for a large segment of the US and Europe, the economic meltdown of 2007-2009 has never really ended. That segment has limped along and frankly can’t afford that upgrade cycle. I’ve noticed that prices for enthusiast PC components have risen rather than dropped over time and the number of small computer stores has dropped to near zero.

On the Software side of things something similar happened as Joel pointed out – hardware advances that so far outstripped software requirements (games being a notable exception) that PCs didn’t need upgrading anywhere near as often. In fact, you see some specifications and trends where PC “power” actually drops as in the minipc and the netbook/chromebook crazes.

And there’s the multiplicity of computing platforms now – including the cloud.

I think the fact that you can get by upgrading the GPU has a lot to do with it.
Any i5 or i7 is good enough for gaming at HD resolutions as long as the GPU is up to par

dc

Tech wall or lack of creativity? Everyone has an opinion, and I know where Joel stands, but I see it as a bit of both. The PC has to get better than it is, or there won’t be a reason to buy a new one. To make things worse, MS has a product that many people don’t care for, it doesn’t seem interested. That’s a double whammy. A lack of interest in improving the product can also be caused by a lack of creativity. After decades of hiring the “best and the brightest” from the top colleges, they are filled with people who are great on standardized tests. Woohoo!! They get a star, and they are good at getting stars.

Cestarian

Yeah, the desktop environments for example haven’t really evolved since the 90s… Matured? Maybe a little, I mean from 98 to XP to 7, then some regressions at 8 and some weird mess at 10. On the OS X side we have basically the same shit from the 90s till now, on Linux we have had a few innovation attempts that have all failed and are stuck with the gnome3 that looks like OS X’s shit and KDE that looks like the windows 7 shit, and maybe derivatives or alternatives (like cinnamon that’s a cute mix of win xp and 7, or xfce that’s like the win xp interface but improved, lxde like the win xp interface, right now the only DE I know that’s actually different from everything else, works, is cool and is blazing fast is Enlightenment, but that’s been in alpha for years (and still is) but justifiably since it has been evolving pretty beautifully over all this time; ironic part? one unpopular linux distribution ships with enlightenment, nothing else, and yet enlightenment is actually sponsored by samsung, I’m amazed by the lack of attention it’s getting…)

Lack of creativity is definitely the problem, even if I praise Enlightenment as much as I do in that area, it’s not insanely diverse from the others (just enough to be noticable and cool) but it’s in reality been around since the 90s by itself (originating in 1997, is almost as old as linux itself, but of course I am referring to enlightenment 17 and newer).

I have a vision for how to alleviate this problem, and it can be made real on Linux, but I am just not skilled enough as a programmer to execute it.

I think real desktop innovation is only happening in the Linux space nowadays. All of the major desktops are advancing nicely (Cinnamon, KDE, Gnome) and even the minor ones are progressing (e.g. XFCE soon migrating to GTK3 and probably Wayland).

OSX is actually regressing backwards in look (like the “flat” panel look in new versions) and Win10 is the exact mess you describe.

Conservative411

People forget that PC’s are much more stable now. 10 years ago if you owned a computer longer than 3 years you were going to have a problem. Now you can own one for 5-8 years without a problem and longer you have an SSD. Life of ownership is vastly improved.

XenoSilvano

Diminishing Returns.

Charles Wallinger

I see a no path out for microsoft if people buy a new pc without a os will 10 slide over to the new pc not likely so doesn’t that leave them at a dead end as a os since they will not be releasing new versions one would have to keep buying the old one does that make sense?

>savt

as huge as Zen will be as a whole (I foresee beyond Broadwell performance), I see 2 rising markets that will be left out; VR WILL drive demand for high performance PC’s in the coming years (this year, not so much thought) as the shear immersion will likely draw people in, it might not revolutionize or jumpstart PC sales, but it will help. The second market I can see coming that is known but not touched on is the HTPC, practically everyone has a TV who has a computer, I know smart TV’s are a thing, but not everyone has nor wants one, also having streaming ability, ability to play optical media and (occasional) games will appeal to people, some people see having a Playstation or an Xbox as being childish, or want something really small that can do all of this are major selling points.

Aside, not every consumer is smart, I’m not saying you have to be brilliant to buy something, but AMD will likely be matching Skylake in the HP 360x (x360, I don’t remember), while Bristol Ridge has lower IPC, the higher clock speed could bee a selling point, it should perform about the same, and the higher clock speed gives the impression it is faster. Stuff like this could drive sales for AMD

Joel Hruska

AMD is targeting Haswell, not Broadwell / Skylake.

>savt

why? Right now Excavator is pretty close to Sandy and Ivy bridge, AMD’s target is to be extremely competitive again with Zen

Joel Hruska

“Right now Excavator is pretty close to Sandy and Ivy bridge”

Excavator is nowhere near those targets. Anandtech’s benchmarks of Carrizo make that painfully clear.

It’s not pretty. But if you take those scores and multiply them by 1.4x, you’ll see that Excavator ends up in the ballpark of the Intel chips — rarely matching the highest-end, but often fighting it ought in the middle.

Here’s something you should know: The last major jump in Intel IPC was from Nehalem to Sandy Bridge — Ivy was a 2-3% improvement, Haswell was a 7-8% boost, Broadwell gave back maybe 2-3%, and then Skylake gave Intel a 4-6% kick. If AMD can match Haswell, it’ll be almost entirely caught up to Intel.

>savt

you might be right, but I do not trust those benchmarks at all due to the entire thing with OEM’s sticking AMD hardware with single channel memory in all but a handful of cases, so while I not entirely trust this source, their data from benchmarking does support IPC (score divided by base clockspeed and turbo) gains from each architecture advancement, also they are the only ones with Athlon 845 benchmarkshttps://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+X4+845&id=2721
I do stand behind these benchmarks vs Intel hardware might not be accurate, but as far as showing improvement for AMD, it does show an accurate trend

LorinT

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that Windows 10 is a core reason that the industry is suffering. A stronger dollar should mean that more people in the US are buying PCs … and that’s not happening. Instead, many people are looking for any way possible to turn off GWX, and stay with Windows 7. Intel should be livid with what Microsoft has done to the market, trying to force all new Skylake PCs to only run Win10. If Win7 were optimized for Skylake and brought back to the market, sales would surge.

Michael Vasovski

So now Palmer Luckey is a f*cking market analyst? That guy should stick to selling out to that other schlock CEO. Two peas in a pod.

David Swanson

Discretionary funds in this economy must go to other priorities. Job security is bleak at best. Windblows 10 IMO is a surveillance bot disguised as a operating system and Skylake is way too expensive. Everyone is devolving into bottom feeder and cannibalize status. Those revenue streams of the past are that, welcome to the new normal. Adapt to your customers new realities or perish.

The most incredible thing is that by signing the Win 10 EULA a user willingly allows full access to its computer and files for Microsoft.

SilentGal

I haven’t brought a PC in years now as i just upgrade the parts that need to be upgraded. (980TI costs 1800-2200 dollars) I may purchase a new one at the end of this year, but i wont be installing windows 10 on it. DX12 has done nothing so far to prove it is worth even upgrading to from Quantum Break and gears of war pathetic launches and issues.

Looking at the market statistics you have supplied are from the general sales of whole pcs that ship with an OS i am taking it. Is there any chance you can supply the sale of components likes CPU’s and GPU’s and compare it to PC’s sold?

Consumers looking for PC’s for VR i would suspect they would build their own PC so they wouldn’t been included on the total amount sold.

There is soooo much information missing in this article. Assuming about AMD loss in sales? How much do you take into consideration from the use of AMD in Xbox and PS? OK so they would take a loss in one sector, but how much more of an increase in the other sectors was there?

I could go and get some graphs that display the sale of lets say sex toys. Sales have declined for one type of sex toy they sell and say the sex toy market is falling apart. Yet they are selling LOTS of sex toy components/attachments which is bring in more profit then the so called market failing has lost.

When a lot of people will start using Linux (on which those points are covered nicely btw) they will blame grumpkins and fairies and cry some foul communist conspiracy as the reason for them using their users.

Cestarian

Is anyone really surprised that nobody wants Windows 10? Windows 10 is just one huge privacy violations, everything we do on the internet is public, sure, there is no privacy on the internet, very well, there’s no privacy in the streets either, but at least in our homes… Until Windows 10, when our local files, our offline data, and all information that the computer can gather about our home is sent straight off to microsoft to share with it’s best buds at the NSA and FBI, and Microsoft are surprised that making W10 free wasn’t enough to lure people into using it? They’re even surprised that trying to force it on people through any means necessary wasn’t enough… To be honest, the low adoption rates of W10 are slightly ticking upwards my faith in humanity.

Also, why isn’t Android on the list?

Steven Hollingsworth

No not at all Cestarian, what with hardware incompatibility etc.I mean first Microsoft has the brilliant idea to drop XP, which leaves those with XP hardware to move on to Windows 7, then they realease Windows 8 which sucked as bad as Vista, and they wonder why nobody wants Windows 10. Well let me just say most netbooks and older XP machines loaded with Windows 7 do just fine for the tasks most people use their devices for anyways. Not to mention Windows 10 introduced a lot of crap nobody wanted or needed. I am pretty sure, people are capable of getting their own antivirus and installing updates without Microsoft’s help.

Ascaris

Microsoft has been releasing new versions of Windows as separate products forever, with the goal of getting us to buy the same product repeatedly. They had to change the UI and look & feel of Windows enough to justify calling it a new product… people would cry foul if Microsoft tried to charge a hundred bucks for a new version of Windows that looks like the old one, even if it was massively improved under the hood.

Even with that in mind, very few Windows users ever upgraded Windows on an existing machine until the GWX campaign. People used the version of Windows that came with the PC, and when the PC got to be too old and slow to run current software titles anymore (which was generally before the Windows version in question ran out of support), the “new, improved” version of Windows was supposed to be the cherry on the top that got people to pull the trigger on the upgrade.

Then came Windows Vista. It was received so poorly that many opted to keep using XP, with a lot of them STILL using XP now. Before Vista, each shiny new Windows version was adopted pretty quickly; people were following the Microsoft plan to perfection. Vista broke that pattern, and the dominant version at the time (XP) was so stable compared to Win 9x (a first for those who had not tried Win2k) that people began to question the “upgrade Windows whenever a new one arrives” like never before.

When 8 turned out to be a mess, the precedent for skipping Windows releases had already been set. Win 8 was supposed to force a well-stocked Windows app store into being so that MS could make up lost time in the mobile market; the idea was that we would all upgrade to 8 and be a built-in market for Windows apps that would also run on phones, and that all of the desktop 8 users would run out and buy Windows phones that would use all the same apps they already use on the PC. But for MS to sell that idea to developers, 8 had to be a big hit, and it wasn’t.

So that’s how we got to Windows 10, with its free upgrade and “Windows as a service.” Now that people were not throwing away PCs every few years as they had been, the OEM sales of Windows were way down, and clearly the “upgrade now! It’s new and improved!” thing was a demonstrable failure. “Windows as a service” is an attempt to re-monetize Windows in the current environment, where people keep their PCs a lot longer than they used to, and where the customers cannot be counted on to reliably purchase new Windows versions whenever they are told to do so. MS just has the final hurdle of getting us onto the version with which we’ll be “serviced,” and after that, no more upgrade headaches for MS. The free upgrade makes perfect sense in that way.

With the “half phone, half desktop hybrid OS” vision of 8 thoroughly repudiated by the market, you might think MS would develop another 7 or XP and get its mojo back, but using the installed base of Windows users to catch up with Apple and Google in their mobile app stores was not up for discussion, even though it was the biggest cause of the failure of 8. MS is too afraid of being the next AOL… a former giant that had once received top billing in a merger with Time-Warner that had dwindled down to an irrelevant web portal and free email provider that approximately three people worldwide still use.

That’s why we got all of the stuff we didn’t want in 10. As with 8, 10 was never about us, the Windows PC user. It was always about the mobiles. “Mobile first, cloud first,” remember? That puts us (the long-time Windows users and MS customers) at “last.”

Even being given away for free for non-enterprise customers, 10 has not caught on in the manner MS had hoped. We keep seeing the adoption rates compared to Windows 7, but Windows 7 was never free. Windows 7 was never pushed even remotely as hard as MS is pushing 10. Microsoft’s desperation is the reason why we’re getting the hard sell in the first place!

Ekard

The companies I work with are planning Win10 to be an “attrition upgrade route”. Once Win10 is approved, there will be no mass migration. As machines are replaced, they will be imaged with Win10 instead of Win7. If other enterprises are planning the same route to Win10, then I doubt we will ever see a “recovery” in the PC market. Enterprise computers generally last the warranty life (3-5 years) before being replaced. I doubt we will ever see significant growth again. Gaming PC’s will be the exception of course but they are not a significant portion of the overall PC market. Mobile Phones will do (are doing) the same thing.

I think the title alone tells you why PC are suffering in sales. People just want to buy a computer to do things. Skylake and Windows 10 tells you nothing besides the point that Skylake is not widely available, many stores still sell last year’s models, and Windows 10, despite released in July 2015, is still a work in progress and lacking in anything new and innovative.

The PC market is distinguished as desktops, laptops, 2-in-1 convertibles, and tablets, but Microsoft’s Windows is on the losing end. People want to be able to walk into a store or online web site and buy the best computer without hassle. Please make that happen. It was agony to search endlessly to find the right configuration. Asking questions about PC purchasing is like a direct line to the engineering department (and I’m an engineer and love wonky discussions on my area of expertise). Maybe a simple chart will do.

Another thing, 5 year old computers should be replaced. You can certainly keep older computers longer, but that’s mainly because smartphones made PC replacements irrelevant. You don’t need a PC as much so you keep them longer. Unfortunately, my 5 year old PC was on its last legs and was failing in more ways than one (USB ports not working, slow as heck, boot up requiring 5 minutes). My PC was loud like an airplane with the awful CPU fan and the old hard drive. Time for an upgrade. The PC industry hasn’t changed much in how they present their products, but hardware has improved significantly. Thus, they are missing an opportunity to not do better design in both hardware, software, and marketing.

Ascaris

There’s no reason to replace something if it still does what you want. Fans and hard drives can be replaced without much fuss; you don’t need to throw the entire thing away and buy a new one because of minor issues like that.

I’ve never cared much for the “woops, the ash tray is full; better buy a new one” philosophy of planned obsolescence and disposable consumer goods. I have an 8 year old laptop that still runs as well as it did brand new. Everything on it works, and its performance with Win 7 (it came with Vista, though it had XP on it for nearly all of its 8 years) is quite good. I certainly never had boot times that got even somewhat close to 5 minutes!

My main PC is a Sandy Bridge i5. It’s not yet five years old, but Sandy Bridge itself is. I haven’t even considered upgrading! My overclocked i5 (with all voltages held conservatively low) will hold its own with any new (non-OC) system out there now, and there simply is no need for me to go faster just to say I can.

Will my Sandy degrade to the point of instability before I am done using it? Maybe. It’s a fairly mild overclock; the voltages are far less than what some people think is safe, but you never know with overclocking. Still, it has one thing that I like: the die is soldered to the IHS, unlike Ivy, Haswell, Broadwell, and Sky Lake. Solder has an unlimited life; thermal grease does not.

All of the Intel CPUs with thermal grease are cheapened parts (sold at full price, though) that are meant to fail in a few years, whether they are obsolete or not. As I mentioned, I don’t like the “throw it away and buy a new one” thing. As such, I wouldn’t even consider a desktop PC (laptops don’t suffer from that affliction, as they are delidded) that features an internally greased CPU. If my i5 dies from overclocking, I’ll get another one in the secondary market. I can accept a CPU failure from my own choice to overclock… one that has an intentional design flaw meant to render it useless in a few years is something else entirely.

Greigio76

You oversell the upgradability of a 5 year old computer especially when there was a clear transition from old to new technology. Replacing the CPU fan is not for amateurs as I am. The hard drive has moved from PATA/IDE to SATA. Guess what? I like the newer SATA hard drives. Replacing all the annoyances of my old PC to make it right will cost at minimum $200 or more, but I’m still stuck with a slow CPU. Guess what’s the better solution? A Pentium desktop PC selling for $200 at Best Buy. Anyways, I upgraded to a Skylake and spent closer to $900 for the best configuration. Nevermind that I already upgraded the video card and wasted $60. I still keep the old PC around as a backup although I cannot use two USB ports that no longer work unexpectedly.

Ascaris

That’s a more compelling justification for an upgrade than what you said before, which is that a five year old PC should be replaced. I said there’s no reason to upgrade a PC if it still does what you want. You want it to have SATA, working USB ports, and a faster CPU, so the existing one doesn’t do what you want anymore. That’s a better reason to upgrade than the age of the old PC.

Replacing a fan is not difficult. Still, if you are not confident enough to try it, there are people who will do it for you. Do you buy a new car when the old one has a minor malfunction that is easily fixed? Even if you’ve never worked on a car yourself, you can take it to someone who will fix it.

I have an eight year old laptop, and typical of devices of its vintage, it has a SATA II setup (Intel PM965). What five-year-old computer do you have that still used PATA?

As far as the CPU goes… again, if it is fast enough to do what you want it to do, there’s no need to replace it. “Slow” is a relative term. The question is, though, relative to what? If it is slow relative to what you want to do, that is quite different than saying it’s slow compared to the newest, fastest PCs out there.

My main PC is a Sandy Bridge setup, an i5-2500k. That CPU model was released five years ago, though my particular one is a bit newer than that. It’s not “slow” by any means! I have no plans to upgrade at present, since my setup meets my needs.

In fact, Sandy is arguably superior to newer (mainstream) Intel CPUs in at least one way. The Sandy Bridge CPUs feature a soldered connection between the die and IHS, while all the newer mainstream CPUs have thermal grease, which (in general) tends to dry out and lose its efficiency over time. This is an important factor for me, given that I tend to keep my gear for a long time, and the long-term stability of the thermal grease on newer CPUs has not been established.

Microsoft’s exhortations to the effect that Skylake won’t be supported on WIndows 7 past a certain date don’t fill me with desire for Skylake either.

Greigio76

You are certainly correct that there’s no reason to replace a computer when it works fine, but I argue the 5 year mark is a good benchmark regardless. And even when I conveyed my reasons as justification, it’s really to express my bewilderment that I need to in the first place. A 5 year old PC is half as fast as the newest computers. If you like to wait and time matters little, then that’s your choice. And also, it already nearly reached its end of life. My USB ports failed AFTER I decided to retire my computer. Every additional year that you own it is another year it collects dust and sits in the corner. That’s fine too. It’s just not worth upgrading to prolong it. At any moment, something else can fail and it will.

Since you manage to buy the right computer with an adequate CPU, good for you. However, the average user will more or less put up with their computer until they can’t stand it anymore. I predict most computers are like that.

Ascaris

The Sandy Bridge i5-2500k was released a bit over five years ago, and can still hold its own today. Half as fast? Hardly. In its conservatively overclocked form, it’s quite similar in performance to Skylake in a prebuilt (non-overclocked) PC, which is presumably what you’re talking about. Even in stock form, it’s not a great deal slower than the newest i5s. It’s still significantly better than anything AMD offers even now (CPU wise), since single-thread performance is still important, and AMD is way, way behind there. Adding more (slower) cores is only useful in certain applications, and most general computing (including gaming) does not fit in that group.

What exactly would I gain upgrading? I can’t think of anything important. A little less power consumption, perhaps? Trivial, but sure, there’s that. Will my SSD go any faster with a newer CPU? No… and neither will my GPU, which doesn’t even come close to saturating the PCIE 2.0 16x bus. If I wanted new features like USB 3.1, I could just use a PCIE addon card.

Of course, I would also overclock a Skylake, so apples to apples, it would be quicker, but would I even notice it? I doubt it– I can’t really tell just by using the system when I have it overclocked and when its at stock. I notice if I am gaming, but otherwise, it’s not something that makes a huge difference. I know I tend to be quite conservative with overclocking voltages and temperatures, and later CPUs tend to get hot a lot quicker with their smaller die size and non-soldered IHS, and they seem to need more of an increase in voltage than Sandy, from what I’ve read.

That thermal paste Intel used instead of solder doesn’t last forever… seems like planned obsolescence to me, and I don’t care for that a bit. And with Microsoft telling me I have to use Windows 10 on Skylake if I want full security update support beyond (whatever date they picked that’s still short of 2020), it’s a given I won’t be going that way.

BillBasham

Do most enterprises still deploy PC based business applications?

The last time I had any contact with an enterprise programmer, he told me all the business applications he was writing were server based with a web interface.

Quenepas

Well depending on the industry. I work for a high tech manufacturing company and almost all of the several thousand employees need local applications. Im sure this sooner rather than later.

BillBasham

Thank you for the info.

Is the use of local applications because the applications need access to PC hardware connections?

(I’m thinking CAM machines and such)

Phantom_e

I usually go right to the comment section first because it’s usually more entertaining than the article :)

303418

Americans are so involved in social networking and the non-sense and crap that entails they are no longer serious about real computing. Everything for Americans needs to be entertaining; either virtual reality (movies and games) or stupid humor. So since American society has changed to this non-sense and Americans no longer live in reality, the need for PCs has diminshed greatly. If they can get on Facebook, Twitter, instagram, etc and stream crap to their Cell phones at the same time they are driving in several thousand pound automobiles, then Americans are supposedly Happy.

Mike

Once upon a time there was doom. And you needed a good new computer to run it.

Then there was quake, and once again you needed a good new computer to run it.

On the CPU side everything seems fine… We need beastly new GPUS though, for cheap, so developers can push graphics in games yet again. And those GPU’s are finally coming.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take so long for TSMC and Global foundries to get to 10nm and 7nm, as 16 did, or this stagnation can and will happen again. What a shame intel doesn’t make separate GPU cards.

Lophs

Beside some relatively niche professional uses like graphic design, video editing, and high level programming, each newer CPU line marginal performance wins thus marginal benefit to majority of PC users. Also like many of commenters have stated, the every day uses of PC like word processing, and consuming entertainment can be done by old pc competently.

Even prior segment of the market that pushed upgrade cycle like gaming hasn’t benefited much from the last generation of cpu upgrades, in fact the latest Skylake chips are either in a statistical tie with the last generation of intel chip according to some benchmarks, even though they are more energy efficient which isn’t a big priority for gamers. The bottleneck of most games is the GPU.

Not sure if anything will spur demand for faster cpus in the near future. 4k gaming is extremely niche and a mixed bag in my opinion. Most often people have to compromise on graphic fidelity to play at 4k resolutions at a respectable framerates and at that point it is debatable whether the higher resolution means better experience overall.

4k movies are very rare, streaming sites for now, and most people haven’t bought into the 4k TV/monitor craze b/c frankly it isn’t the much of a leap as SD to HD was. Also rendering 4k can also be easily on a relatively modern cpu and there are upcoming cheap GPUs that will do it flawlessly in the near future.

As a owner of 60 inch 4k TV, with perfect 20/20 vision, I have to sit like 6 feet from the TV to notice the difference when watching 4K movie (The Martian is excellent in 4k). One of the few times where I thought that people who buy 90 inch TV aren’t stupid is when watching any 4 k in a relatively spacious living room. You may need a 90 inch TV to appreciate 4k at typical couch ranges believe it or not.

Windows 10 is also a mixed bag at best, no reason to buy a new computer for. Beside the potential privacy issue, there are really under the hood improvement such as kernal updates versus Windows 8.1, in fact I think Windows 8.1 is slightly faster. However that’s not the point for MS, the point of Windows 10 is UWP, and UWP is in trouble judging from the lack of major traditional programs and poor reception of UWP ports of triple AAA games like GOW, Tomb Raider, and Quantum Break. If quantity of user review is any indication of sales, Tomb Raiders has ten of thousand of reviews on steam, while its UWP ports hasn’t even broken a thousand.

ephemeris

The production type applications available for PCs and the latest cpus are very expensive. CAD,3D, etc software will normaly cost the same as the computer itself. Then in most curcumstances 2 or 3 times the cost of the computer.

While emphasis on ‘gaming’ is perhaps a good ‘market’ connection. The compliment of good software limits PCs to certain elitist or given trademark communities.

An idealogue of ‘app’ – which is really telling the user of nothing in the details of ‘front-end,and back-end’ being self serving to its seller or propriety does nothing to invigurate the relevance of power involved from modern day processing.

And still with 3×4″ screens (another halliboo), just because your connectiong wirelessly to your tv. Then watching the web page video. Says nothing of what that web page (or its address) really is. Or what it means to access it.

I think that the several combinations of computing available is nothing but a compliment to the PC. Tablets,Smartphones,Portables . If they work together then they should play together well. Choice is still there.

Usually though you don’t buy two cars just to keep them quite . So that you can have keep them being payed off. Cant afford anything else. Perhaps though the retirement of of a given platform should be kept to its compatible form factors. For further utilization. No reason to complain though. Since PC users are just smarter.

Daniel Revas

While they didn’t mention it directly, PC Gaming PC’s are enjoying growth.

LF80

Just wanted to add: I think for years people (ill-informed ones) would just throw a computer away and go buy a new one, when they got a virus, or some sort of hardware failure.

We IT-savvy folks would likely fix it, but the regular Joe customer doesn’t think this way. I know this because I have dealt with people like this personally. I’ve had customers, where I’ve found a piece of malware or whatnot on their machine and advised a direction to go, say to me that they’ll just go buy a new one.

It may be possible a negative trend is occurring because this (lack of) logic has changed. Certainly, hardware lasts longer than in the past.

John Barksdale

I understand a lot of “I hate Start Menu” cult members are clinging to Windows 8. I recall being told I was a Luddite for wanting a Start Menu. Personally, I enjoy Windows 10 on my older laptops and desktops. Core 2 Duo and Intel SSDs get the job done for me. I held out for a Start Menu and I won. Enjoy Windows 8!

Paul

The real problem is software, with the exception of games and a few select applications, most just don’t push the hardware anymore and because of that we’re upgrading a lot less, I remember in the past where we had to upgrade because most software was pulling ahead, I even remember Windows NT which I think Microsoft delayed because it was too demanding, could you imaging that today.

So then if software find new ways of using the hardware then people will upgrade, games is one avenue but consoles are holding gaming back, other software, well there are many ways they can be better, A.I is one area where all software could be much better with.

Joe Black

Meh… The PC industry is fine. They just want it to continue growing as fast as it has in the past.

There will be a huge market for PCs for a long time still. in some form or other.

Chris

Well, everyone seems to recognize that older hardware is “good enough” for most people. I disagree as to why. The only reason it is good enough is when the new hardware doesn’t offer enough of an improvement to justify spending hard-earned money on it. The improvements to x86 chips, in particular, over the last several years is such that people’s money will stay in their pockets.

I’d be really interested to see one of these charts of the decline in PC sales juxtaposed with a chart displaying sales of after-market computer parts such as motherboards, GPUs, RAM, and so on. My gut tells me the latter chart would track an increase in sales. I would theorize that it isn’t so much that people don’t want new computers as that the increasing computer literacy of the masses, coupled with the–let’s be honest about this–idiot-level easiness of pulling out one part and putting in another has led a significant percentage of people who used to buy new rigs to become people who put together their own. And when you put together your own, you don’t always replace everything at once, but a part at a time. I do not believe that it is computers that are suffering a downturn in sales, but x86 CPU chips in particular, as they are not advancing fast enough to keep people interested. Also, Windows has not been a sexy or desirable desktop experience for people, realistically, since the days of XP. Computer hardware is alive and well. It is only stagnating x86 chips and Windows-based OS software sales that are in decline.

John Henry

I’m not buying any new pc’s that use intel products or windows anytime in the near or distant future , as they are working together to lock down the pc from the machines owners . I bought two new android leveno tablets stuck costume roms on them, me and the wife are happy with them. They do what we need and do not use anything intel or microsoft .
This is one thing I hear alot people are going out of their way locally around me to avoid these two companies now as if they was infections . This could be a bigger thing than I can see causing declines in these two things forcing people away from the pc market as it did us. Im not a expert but if it looks like a duck walks like a duck sounds like a duck it’s probably a duck .

Dave

I am one of the consumers that is not upgrading my quad core HP win7 to Win10. I did try it on a virtualbox install it function ok. I am not convinced upgrading my 7 year old sysyem to win10 is a good idea. I have read update issues with windows auto updates to much since it was released. After reading an article about the windows 10 anniversary update which as caused boot issues.

I decided end my MS need. I need a OS that is reliable and so far I am not that impressed with win10.

Sorry Microsoft my plans are mac and linux of while I have my older IBM T500 and my former win7 home built i3 3ghz due core running Mint Linux 18.l nicely configure. Mac as my primary system and linux as my secondary.

Consumers are being forced to upgrade now with manufacturers not going to support Windows 7 on new computers. Guess the will be more for linux in the future thanks Microsoft appreciate it. I will not need a new system for sometime now. My i3 is fast as and reliable. If I did I would buy a used one. I know of many people on forms who had win10 and is now running mint linux 18. Which i helped them install. And they are not power users they just want a system that is functioning not jendlessly unstable. My mac has never gave me that kind of issue and it is as old as my HP. Though that i plan on replacing the macbok pro in I year or two. It will not be updaing to the macOS in November.

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